Author
Joe Navarro
The former FBI counterintelligence agent who teaches people to read comfort and discomfort, not to catch liars.
1 book on BookYol
The story and the impact
Joe Navarro was born in Cuba and grew up in the United States. He spent his career as an FBI special agent working in counterintelligence and behavioural analysis, where reading the people across the table was part of the job rather than a parlour trick.
After leaving the Bureau he turned that experience into books for a general audience. What Every Body Is Saying, written with the psychologist Marvin Karlins and published in 2008, became his best-known work; he later wrote further books on body language and on dangerous personalities.
The signature
Navarro's method starts from the body's fast, largely automatic reactions to threat and ease, and treats nonverbal behaviour as a running signal of comfort or discomfort. He insists on context, a person's normal baseline and clusters of signals, and he is blunt that no single gesture proves a lie: a sign tells you something has changed, not why.
The questions they work on
- Which parts of the body give away comfort and discomfort before the face does?
- How do you know what is normal for this particular person before you read anything into a gesture?
- Why does nonverbal reading go wrong when it is treated as lie detection?
Thinking tools
- Comfort and Discomfort SignalsUses and explains it
Comfort and discomfort signals are the nonverbal reactions, such as relaxed or tense posture, open or closed faces and bodies, and leaning in or away, that show how at ease a person is in a moment; Joe Navarro treats them as more reliable than any supposed sign of lying.
Learn it: Read People, Station 1 - Behavioral BaselineUses and explains it
A behavioral baseline is the way a particular person normally sits, speaks, moves and reacts when nothing is at stake, observed first so that later changes, rather than isolated gestures, can be read.
Learn it: Read People, Station 2 - Pacifying BehaviorsUses and explains it
Pacifying behaviors are small self-soothing actions, such as touching the neck, rubbing the hands or forehead, stroking the hair or exhaling slowly, that people use to calm themselves after something stresses them; Joe Navarro reads them as signs of stress, not of guilt.
Learn it: Read People, Station 3
Limits and fair objections
Nonverbal behaviour reveals what people really think and feel.
Navarro himself warns that there is no single sign of deception and that a signal of discomfort can come from cold, fatigue or nerves as easily as from guilt. Read his book the way he asks: as a guide to noticing changes and asking better questions, never as a verdict on someone's honesty.
Stands on: research and argument · The author's own caveat